PAMINA

PAMINA 

(Contract Number: FP6-036404) 

Executive Summary 

of the activities during the first annual period 

Author(s): 

Jörg Mönig, André Rübel (GRS) 

Reporting period: 06/10/01 – 07/09/30 

Date of issue of this report : 08/03/20 

Start date of project : 06/10/01 

Duration : 36 Months 

PU 

RE 

CO 

Project co-funded by the European Commission under the Euratom Research and Training Programme on 

Nuclear Energy within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006) 

Dissemination Level 

Public 

Restricted to a group specified by the partners of the [PAMINA] project 

Confidential, only for partners of the [PAMINA] project 

[PAMINA]

DISTRIBUTION LIST 

Name Number of copies Comments 

PAMINA Sixth Framework programme, 26.03.2008 1

The Integrated Project PAMINA is part of the 6 th framework programme of the European 

Commission. It runs from October 1, 2006 until September 30, 2009 and brings together 25 

organisations from ten European countries and one EC Joint Research Centre in order to 

improve and harmonise methodologies and tools for demonstrating the safety of deep 

geological disposal of long-lived radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel in different 

geological environments. The results may be exploited by different stakeholders such as 

national waste management organisations, regulators and the public at large. 

The participating organisations represent all major radioactive waste producing countries 

within the European Union. The consortium includes national waste management 

organisations, a regulator, several technical safety organisations (TSO) that closely support 

the regulator, universities and research organisations and two SMEs. From their different 

roles within their national radioactive waste programme, the participants bring in 

complementary viewpoints and experiences into the project which allows exploitation of the 

project results by both national waste management organisations and regulators alike. After 

the first project year a German university was admitted as new Contractor, so the total 

number of Contractors is now 27. 

A number of organisations in various countries in Europe but also overseas have been 

invited to become an associated group to IP PAMINA. Several institutions have signed 

already a respective agreement or have indicated that they are going to do so in the near 

future. 

The main objective of IP PAMINA is to improve and harmonise integrated performance 

assessment (PA) methodologies and tools for various disposal concepts of long-lived 

radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel in different deep geological environments. The IP 

PAMINA aims at providing a sound methodological and scientific basis for demonstrating the 

safety of deep geological disposal of such wastes, that will be of value to all national 

radioactive waste management programmes, regardless of waste type, repository design, 

and stage, that has been reached in PA and safety case development. 

The work is organised in four RTD (Research and Technology Development) components 

and one additional component dealing with knowledge management and dissemination of 

knowledge. 

- In RTD component 1, the state of the art of methodologies and approaches needed for 

assessing the safety of deep geological disposal is evaluated on the basis of a 

comprehensive review of the international practices, which includes the identification of 

any deficiencies in both methods and tools, and in the quality of data required. 

- In RTDC 2 a framework and methodology for the treatment and management of 

uncertainty during PA and safety case development will be established. In the context of 

the development of the post-closure safety case, guidance on, and examples of, good 

practise will be provided on how to treat different types of uncertainty, spatial variability, 

the development of probabilistic safety assessment tools, and the techniques for 

sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. 


- In RTDC 3 methodologies and tools for integrated PA for various geological disposal 

concepts will be further developed. This includes the development of scenarios, the PA 

approach to gas migration processes, and the PA approach to radionuclide source term 

modelling. In some of the areas, PA representations are known to be less advanced. 

With respect to the planned work concerning safety and performance indicators several 

test cases will be defined and calculated for host rocks such as clay and rock salt, for 

which the use of safety and performance indicators has hardly been investigated in 

detail yet. 

- In RTDC 4 several benchmark exercises on specific processes will be carried out, in 

which quantitative comparisons are made of approaches that, on the one hand, rely on 

simplifying assumptions and models, and on the other hand, on complex models that 

take into account a more complete process conceptualization in space and time. 

Work has commenced in all project areas. In most work packages the scientific-technical 

work is now progressing according to the original description of work. From the total 

resources scheduled to be used in IP PAMINA, about 25 % have been used within the first 

year. This is slightly less than originally foreseen and it is due to some delays in the 

beginning of the project, but these initial delays in no way affect the outcome of the project or 

the time schedule of the project. 

The work that has been carried out in the various components within the first year is shortly 

summarised in the following: 

RTDC1: 

The main objective of RTDC 1 is to assess the state of the art of the methodologies and 

approaches needed for the safety assessment of geological repositories, and to distil the 

lessons learned from the rich experience accumulated in their development and application. 

RTDC1 consists of two work packages (WP) of which WP1.2 mainly acts as precursor of 

RTDC2. The scope of WP1.1 will be comprehensive of the relevant topics that need to be 

addressed in safety assessment in the frame of safety cases. Initially 12 topics were 

identified for consideration during the project, covering four topics each project year. The first 

group comprised the following topics: 

- safety functions 

- definition and assessment of scenarios 

- safety indicators and performance/function indicators 

- uncertainty management and uncertainty analysis 

The review is carried out by bringing together the views from all participating countries and 

integrating the work from countries outside PAMINA where possible. Detailed guidance for 

the individual contributions has been provided by the RTDC 1 leader in two steps. Initial 

guidance was generic, and then in a second step specific guidance for each topic was 


provided. A technical meeting was convened in Amsterdam in order to review and discuss 

the draft contributions and take decisions on the final phase of the work on the initial topics. 

Contributions have been received by 13 organisations which will be compiled in summary 

reports for each of the topics shortly after the beginning of the second annual period. 

The WP 1.2 review is technically within RTDC 1 but provides a baseline for RTDC 2 

activities. An initial review of the treatment of uncertainty in PA and the safety case for deep 

geological disposal, based on repository programmes worldwide, was drafted and discussed 

in a work package meeting in Brussels. A prominent feature of the report is that it contains 

information from organisations outside the PAMINA consortium, including radioactive waste 

management organisations in Canada, Japan, Sweden, and the US (two projects 

represented). A peer-reviewed paper of the review findings was presented to the 11 th 

International Conference on Environmental Remediation and Radioactive Waste 

Management (ICEM ’07), held in Bruges, Belgium, on 2-6 September 2007. The work 

package has been completed – no further work is planned. 

RTDC2: 

RTDC2 is the largest of the technical components of the project PAMINA with respect to 

supply of manpower and funds. It consists of three work packages of which the last one is to 

pull together the large amount of work in one final report. The two technical work packages 

deal with 

- Key Drivers and Methodologies for the Treatment of Uncertainty and 

- Development and Testing of Concepts for the Treatment of Uncertainty 

Each of the two work packages is subdivided in individual tasks to structure the work. 

In WP2.1 there are altogether four tasks from which the first one about Regulatory 

Compliance specifically deals with issues relating to how uncertainty impacts the choice, use 

and interpretation of performance measures in regulations developed for geological disposal 

facilities. Initial steps have been taken to organise a workshop for regulators in May/June 

2008. 

A task on Communication of Uncertainty aims to understand the effectiveness of different 

methods for communicating the results and methodologies of PA applied to the geological 

disposal of radioactive waste. Significant effort has been invested in preparing for a 

stakeholder workshop in the UK, to be held in October 2007. Contact has been made with 

public stakeholders, initially via the Nuclear Legacy Advisory Forum [NuLeAF]), and a group 

of approximately 20 interested stakeholders - mainly from nuclear communities in England 

and Scotland - have agreed to participate. 

A third task in WP2.1 on Approaches to System PA is exploring the relative advantages and 

disadvantages of different approaches to the quantification of uncertainties in system-wide 

PA calculations. It comprises four high-level topics (posed as questions below) that need to 

be addressed in determining the type of PA to be conducted, and how the results will be 

presented: 


- Under what circumstances is it appropriate to use probability to treat uncertainty, and 

under what circumstances are deterministic approaches more appropriate? 

- At what stage of repository development should assessments aim to be more 

conservative or more realistic? 

- Do hybrid approaches such as “fuzzy mathematics” offer any advantages over standard 

probabilistic approaches? 

- What alternatives are there to presenting the results of PA and associated uncertainties? 

The topics will covered by performing detailed reviews and conducting research by means of 

case studies taken from the programmes of the organisations taking part. Some of the work 

has already started, however most of the work will be initiated in the second year of the 

project. 

The last task in WP2.1 on Techniques for Sensitivity Analysis involves parallel studies 

performed by 7 organisations to compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of 

different methods of sensitivity analysis in PA calculations. The work is of three types, 

- a review of the use of sensitivity analysis in PA, 

- a benchmark study involving all participants and aimed at testing a wide range of the 

sensitivity analysis techniques on two test cases and the 

- evaluation of the use of sensitivity analysis techniques for a range of actual radioactive 

waste repository concepts from the participating countries. 

Effort has also been spent on interpretation of time-dependent sensitivity measures. A review 

of sensitivity analysis techniques has commenced including many different variance-based 

and regression based techniques. Some graphical techniques such as scatter-plots, cob-web 

plots and contribution to the sample mean plots, have also been reviewed. 

Planning for a test of sensitivity analysis techniques by a benchmark of five organisations, 

based on synthetic cases with known sensitivities has been initiated and the definition of two 

test cases has begun. The advantage of such an exercise is that the sensitivity analysis 

results can be studied knowing the “real” dependencies assumed for the cases. With regard 

to the wider testing of sensitivity analysis techniques for PA of radioactive waste repositories 

the analysis for the abandonment scenario for generic disposal facilities in rock salt and in 

clay has begun. 

Work package WP2.2 consists of five tasks. In most of the tasks the work was initiated, but 

the major part of the work will not start before the second project year. The first task deals 

with Parameter Uncertainty and is aimed at providing practical recommendations for the 

reliable and defensible derivation of PDFs for key parameters used in PA calculations. A 

complementary literature study of PDF derivation methodologies has been conducted for 

circumstances where enough data are available or circumstances where a limited amount of 

information is available. A task on Model Uncertainty is evaluating methods for treating 


uncertainties in PA calculations arising from the representation of physical processes by 

models, at both conceptual and practical levels. A probabilistic implementation of a simple 

‘Insight’ model for estimating peak risks from the groundwater pathway as a static simulation 

using GoldSim has been developed. It is now intended to use this model to gain an 

understanding of how important the complexity of a model is, compared to the magnitude of 

the uncertainties in the values of the parameters that describe the processes that are 

significant to safety. 

The third task on Scenario Uncertainty is evaluating methods for the treatment of 

uncertainties associated with scenarios. A review of scenario development methodologies 

and a study on Analytical Hierarchy Processes suitable for quantification of scenario 

probability using expert judgement have been started. Another topic on Spatial Variability 

aims to evaluate approaches to treating uncertainties in PA calculations that arise from the 

spatial variability of facies, materials, and material properties inherent in the geosphere, and 

to develop guidance on the treatment of this source of uncertainty in PA. A review of 

upscaling methods has been performed, and PA exercises for clay and granite host rocks to 

evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of commonly used upscaling techniques have 

been performed. 

The final task of WP 2.2 on Probabilistic Safety Assessment for Geological Repositories aims 

at developing and evaluating a fully probabilistic safety assessment approach incorporating 

scenario, model and parameter uncertainty. The safety-relevant features, events and 

processes (FEPs) that need to be considered by the PA codes have been identified. 

RTDC3: 

The main objective of this component is to develop methodologies and tools for integrated 

performance assessment for various geological disposal concepts. These topics include 

- scenario development, 

- PA approach to gas migration, 

- PA approach to radionuclide modelling and 

- safety indicators and performance indicators. 

Each of these four topics is represented within RTDC3 as an independent work package. 

The objectives of the work package on Scenario Development are the identification of normal 

and altered evolution scenarios based on safety functions and the development of stylized 

scenarios. The work within the first project year dealt with the identification of normal and 

altered evolution scenarios based on safety functions. Safety functions have been introduced 

to allow a more practical approach to structured scenario development (compared to the 

usual multi-barrier system and defence-in-depth). Practical cases are presently being 

developed as well as a scenario identification methodology. Safety functions for carbon 

steel/bentonite/granite concept using systems engineering approach (FRAT) based on the 

first and partly second level system decomposition have been identified. 


The work concerning the development of stylized scenarios will start in the second project 

year. 

The second work package on the PA Approach to Gas Migration aims at improving the 

understanding of gas transport processes on the process level and the representation of 

such processes in PA models in order to allow the determination and quantification of the 

impact of gas on the engineered and natural barriers. The work performed within the first 

project year concerned (1) model description and code development, (2) description of 

calculation cases (not all partners have actually finished the description), (3) data collection 

and (4) test runs. Three organisations have spend their main effort in testing and extending 

numerical codes and have defined test cases. 

The objective of the work package on PA Approach to Radionuclide Modelling is to develop 

more realistic PA approaches to radionuclide source term modelling by a more detailed 

modelling of the chemical environment (in particular the effect of corrosion products) and 

upscaling from one canister/disposal cell to a large scale repository. The work performed 

within the first project year concerned the definition of test cases for disposal in clay and 

development of mathematical tools for the scale-up analyses, and implementation of 

geochemical models for disposal in granite and rock salt. 

The final work package of RTDC3 dealing with Safety Indicators and Performance Indicators 

aims to achieve a common understanding of the role of safety and performance indicators, 

establish indicators for all types of host rocks and to test different performance indicators / 

function indicators with formations other than granite. A proposal for a common 

understanding of the terms “safety indicator”, “performance indicator” and others was 

elaborated, discussed with the other project partners and, according to the results of the 

discussion, modified so that it can be used as a common basis. Further, reference cases 

have been identified and a preliminary list of indicators has been prepared. A detailed work 

plan has been agreed in a work package meeting in June 2007. 


RTDC4: 

In this component it will be evaluated whether using more complex and more realistic 

modelling approaches provide added value and whether they are required to include in PA. It 

deals with three types of complexity which are dealt with in individual work packages: 

- PA Approaches based on Different Complexity of Process Modelling, 

- PA Approaches based on Different Geometric Complexity of Modelling and 

- Uncertainty Analysis Codes 

The first two work packages deal with a variety of host rock types, while the third one deals 

with clay host rocks. 

The work package on PA Approaches based on Different Complexity of Process Modelling 

focuses on specific processes as salt convergence, brine intrusion and radionuclide transport 

by density driven exchange for salt as host rock and as reactive transport for granite and clay 

as host rock. For the salt host rock five test cases have been defined to compare the results 

from different approaches to model the convergence of salt rock and first runs of all five test 

cases has been performed. For granite host rocks programming work has been performed to 

meet the needs of a benchmarking and comparative calculations on the spent fuel/carbon 

steel/bentonite/granite concept have been conducted. For clay as host rock benchmark 

specifications for sensitivity analysis on “Kd” and “solubility limit” models / geochemical have 

been proposed. 

The main focus of the work package on PA Approaches based on Different Geometric 

Complexity of Modelling is on the investigation of the usefulness of codes dealing with 

geometric complex representation of geosphere in comparison to coarse or simplified 1D 

representations used in PA. For all types of host rocks first test cases have been defined. 

The objective of the work package on Uncertainty Analysis Codes is to evaluate the effects 

of uncertainties of parameters describing geological components of a repository in clay on 

nuclide migration through the host rock and through the disposal structures, in a PA context. 

The first benchmark exercise based on the French clay site has been defined and the set up 

of the calculation model, with 1000 samples has been finished. 

Component 5: 

The results generated within the IP PAMINA are of direct relevance to waste management 

programmes and can be exploited on a national level by both waste management 

organisations and regulators alike. Accordingly, knowledge management and the 

dissemination of results are key elements of the IP PAMINA. The dissemination of 

information takes place on two different levels: first on the integrated project level between 

the different participating organisations and second to the external community. 


A project internal WEB site has been set up, which allows each contractor to access all 

relevant project information, including all milestone reports and deliverables. It is organized 

according to the various RTDC and work packages, in order to provide fast access to the 

relevant information. Additionally, an internet site was set up, which describes the project and 

provides information about upcoming and past events. Here also the publicly available 

deliverables will be made available for downloading. In the first year on average about 12 

visitors are registered per day. 

Project overviews or specific results are presented on scientific conferences as part of the 

strategy to disseminate knowledge generated within IP PAMINA to the scientific community 

in general. A generic poster has been prepared by the coordination team and shown on 

several international conferences. Also short descriptions about IP PAMINA were presented 

in publications of broader scope. 

The 1 st Annual PAMINA Workshop was held in September 2007. At this Annual Workshop 22 

contractors were represented. The 1 st Annual Workshop was organized such that no parallel 

sessions were held. This allowed all contractors to be fully informed about the scientific work 

performed and planned in PAMINA. 

In the first project year links have been established between the PAMINA coordinator and the 

IGSC of OECD/NEA. This group represents the “natural” end-users of PAMINA results from 

a large number of countries. It was decided between IP PAMINA and IGSC to provide each 

other on a regular basis with feedback about the discussions and findings on each site. Quite 

a few representatives of IGSC are directly involved in PAMINA work, which will foster this 

kind of information exchange. Representatives of the NEA have been invited to discuss 

findings of the current NEA INTESC initiative at the 1 st Annual Workshop and PAMINA has 

been presented at an internal NEA workshop concerning INTESC. This new development is 

considered to provide an important vehicle for target-oriented knowledge dissemination in the 

future.

PAMINA

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